A paramount concern in a modern enterprise is the ability to quickly access changing information located on disparate systems and platforms within the enterprise. That is, operational managers and executives frequently require real-time visibility into the status of their operations and enterprise processes. In order to properly maintain a comprehensive view of the operations and business processes within an organization, however, information on these systems first needs to be integrated. As an enterprise grows it requires increased flexibility of data sharing throughout its various automated business systems, such as customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), accounting, inventory control, and other systems. A practice known as enterprise application integration (EAI) enables an organization to share data throughout applications and data sources in an organization. EAI may include database linking, application linking, and data warehousing.
Nevertheless, there have been numerous shortcomings in the integration and data sharing in information technology (IT) environments. Independent configuration for disparate technologies and industry standards often make integration requirements difficult to meet. Integrating an existing inventory control system to a new ERP software package, for instance, may be difficult due to the fact that both systems contain unique features that are customized to fit the requirements of particular areas within an organization. Moreover, many EAI solutions contain a confusing web of point-to-point connections between different applications, procedure calls, file transfers, and e-mail-type messaging to transmit organizational data. These solutions are thus high-risk because of their complexity. Moreover, the data within the individual systems is often locked up, sometimes in proprietary form, difficult to access, and not correlated with other systems and platforms. This makes it difficult to obtain a consistent, coherent view of all the business data across the enterprise.
Business intelligence (BI) systems have been developed that combine data gathering, data storage, and knowledge management with analytical tools to present complex and competitive information to planners and decision makers. Many conventional business intelligence systems include modules and programs that provide visual reporting of information regarding the status and operation of business processes in a full-page display panel known as a “dashboard”. By way of example, Syspro™ Company of Costa Mesa, Calif. offers a CRM software product that includes an intuitive dashboard for displaying BI information gathered from various business activity groups (marketing, service, sales, accounting, etc.). A system in which an online connection provider delivers services to sellers via a dashboard report that includes metrics such as item sales, top-line highlights, and an executive summary, is described in U.S. Patent Publication 2005/0197946. Additionally, U.S. Patent Publication 2005/0108655 teaches a computer method for displaying multiple applications at a time on a window browser or dashboard display area. U.S. Patent Publication 2005/0120051 discloses an architecture and system for integrating online transactional processing (OLTP) systems with an analytical processing (OLAP) system. A user interface presentation layer of the architecture is configured for dashboard display of a report run on the OTLP and OLAP data.
A primary drawback of these prior art systems is that they require separate applications or systems for reporting the BI information on the dashboard screen, and then taking direct action based on the data displayed. For example, an operational manager who first learns of a problem based on information presented in a dashboard report is typically required to switch to a completely different application or system in order to take action aimed at correcting or alleviating the problem.
What is needed therefore is an enterprise system that enables a viewer of a real-time business activity monitoring dashboard to take immediate action from the dashboard environment without having to employ a separate system or application.